User “robulus” (who runs a website LiveAndMove.net) came up with this response. Here’s an excerpt, with my emphasis:

I am constantly hungry, and I eat constantly. I snack in between my snacks. But I know that I don’t need to, that my body is designed to go longer periods without solid food. Water is of course a continual necessity. So, when it’s late at night, I do not let myself eat. To be honest, it doesn’t always work, but it is a process of mind over body. The battle is won in the mind. […] Knowing is half the battle… the other half is deciding. 🙂

Late at night, I can choose to throw down a bowl of mac and cheese, or I can have a glass of water, or some tea, to stave off the hunger. It’s a decision. Each decision not to pig out at night makes the next decision not to pig out a little bit easier. The last few nights I’ve managed to either drink water (with some sugar-free flavoring) or have low-calorie snacks like a fruitsicle or a few corn cakes (like rice cakes, but corn).

He provided a lead to a guest post he did over at Lazy Man and Health. He lost 52 pounds in 136 days, and has kept them off for almost a year and a half. That’s over 2 1/2 pounds per week for almost twenty weeks.

How did he do it? He limited himself to 1,500 calories a day by eating several smallish meals spread throughout the day, and did moderate exercise in the morning.

His free website of choice for calorie-counting and was FitDay.com. I went over there to sign up for an account, and by their calculations (using my height, weight, gender, and activity level) they said I was burning about 2,800 calories per day. Since my weight has been relatively constant over the past few months, one could assume that I’m taking in that amount per day.

Three nights in a row with 30 minutes or more logged in on Wii Fit … better than the past few months anyway.

Mixed in a little bit of yoga — Sun Salutation and Half Moon baby! — as well as an in-place run around the happy island. Just about missed completing the tilt-the-board game.

My wife found a site that produces Wii Fit workout routines called, aptly, Wii Fit Routine. It has a number of different types of routines with different lengths and different difficulties. It also can be used to generate workouts tailored for specific goals: endurance, strength, flexibility, and balance. There are a few other extras: recipes, articles, and the like, as well as goal-tracking for weight, BMI, and other things.

Work is pretty evil as far as candy goes. I don’t have to look very far for free, bottomless supplies of sweets. There are at least three places — no, make that four — at work that I can pick up some Sourheads®, some bite-sized chocolate bars, Twizzlers®, whatever. Forget the healthy stuff on my desk — sugar is what gets me going.

I’m going to postulate for a second here. I eat pretty much whatever’s available to me. If I have a box of Stroopwafels, a pack of gum, a 2-liter of soda, or a six-pack of Saranac, I just consume it until it’s gone. (Well, the beer I’ll stop at three or so per day. Thank goodness my wife hides the beer and doles it out to me.)

Much like what NCN found, stuff that’s just there gets eaten. No really good reason beyond that.

But on the bright side, I did do another 31 minutes on Wii Fit tonight, and got another perfect score on the soccer ball heading game. I found last night that I slept better after some exercise. Hopefully that will repeat tonight. 🙂

And it didn’t even make a snide comment at me! Probably was speechless because it thought I was dead.

Thirty-one minutes of Wiixercise: 11 minutes of Hula-Hoop® (no, there’s no video), 13 minutes of rhythmic boxing, a couple games of soccer ball heading, one round of table tilting the balls down the holes, and one game of penguin slide.

Wii Fit wouldn’t let me make a 2 1/2 month goal so I made a three-month goal to lose 14 pounds, which is about the same as my other short-term goal of getting down to 235 pounds by the end of the year.

I need to do this too. I’m at 247 pounds, which is six pounds heavier than I was when I began this blog. My original goal was to hit 151 pounds by May of next year. The correct assessment of my progress toward this goal is: Fat Chance.

So, well, I have to readjust my goals. I e-mailed NCN to see if we could be accountable to one another, and he’s up for it, so we’ll post and spur one another on to good deeds. Here are my new goals:

Down to 235 pounds by the end of the year (Thanksgiving and Christmas are in there, so this probably isn’t as easy as it sounds)

(A friend on Facebook pointed me to it.) The article suggests that exercise has comparatively little to do with weight loss. What does make the difference is simply eating less. The calorie-burning effect of exercise is marginalized or negated by a few things:

Replacing 10 pounds of fat with muscle only results in an extra 40 calories per day burned.

Exercising doesn’t burn as many calories as you might think.

People tend to eat more than they should after exercise, and there are a number of reason why they do.

The article does not state that exercise is unimportant. There are other health benefits to exercise, such as enhanced cognitive ability and cardiovascular health.

I’m on Team Delta for the Man Vs. Debt weight loss challenge. I’m joining 29 other personal finance bloggers in a competition to reach weight goals. The challenge will run from June 1st through July 31st.

I’ve set as a goal to lose 10 pounds during that time. So it’s more Wii Balance Board, more elliptic trainer, and less candy for me! (I’m actually up a bit since I stated my interest in losing weight. Guess I wasn’t that interested!)

That’s the number of days over the past three months I’ve exercised 30 minutes or more, according to my records at Joe’s Goals.

Ouch.

Like most every great plan at the beginning of the year, this one fizzled.

It takes a lot of discipline to be the one out of twenty that will lose a substantial amount of weight and keep it off for life. (That’s one doctor’s estimate on another site I frequent.) The other nineteen die young and are miserable for a good part of their shortened lives. I fear it might take diabetes to get me to change, but I hope not.

One of the guys that works in the same building I do at work bugs me every chance he gets about whether I’m going to the YMCA to exercise or not.

This is a very good thing. I’ve asked him to keep needling me.

He’s a little older than I am, and he’s trying to get back into shape before it’s too late. He’s trying a lot harder than I am, and doing what he can. He’s admitted that it takes longer to recover between workouts than it used to, but he still does what he can.

I have done a little better at exercising than I was at the end of last year. I’ve exercised for at least 30 minutes at least twice a week this month. Keeping track of this is one of only two goals I have this year.

Hopefully my colleague will bug me about getting there three times a week. 😉